When Did Indie Movies Get So Expensively Costumed?

“At the dawn of independent
film, growing out of avant-garde culture, the movies reveled in
their outsider status, portraying edgy misfits living on the cusps
of society, in films like Stranger Than Paradise.
Somewhere along the way, however, America’s self-styled outsider
arts, the ‘indie’ movement in all its manifestations across film,
music and fashion, not only made their peace with the capitalist
hierarchy, but began to celebrate it. Across culture, the ‘indie’
world filed for emancipation from its downtrodden, protest-heavy
forbears, and became something cloying, cutesy and simpering. Once
upon a time, the sight of a man walking across the screen of an
independent film in a $500 silk shirt was immediate shorthand for
the presence of evil. One might as well have cued the Darth Vader
theme music when such a figure appeared, walking on, in all
likelihood, to lay off the film’s hero from his dead end job,
provoking his journey of self-discovery. Now the man in the $500
shirt is likely to be the film’s hero, and if anything we are meant
to feel sympathy for the emptiness all that glitters brings.”
—This
is anti-fashion in nature, and we are pro-fashion… but
there is a huge truth here.